(even if I do not fully agree with 100% of the analyzes)
Internet, angel or demon for ecology?
The migration of the elements of our civilizations (sounds, images, knowledge, flows, exchanges…) towards the virtual space is accelerating. To support and support it, computers, networks, smartphones, and other "connectable" toys have flourished by the billions, aggravating the overexploitation of the planet's resources. However, this global migratory phenomenon from material to intangible can be considered as a macroscopic defense mechanism of nature.
The dematerialization of our media of exchange, of our elements of knowledge, of our communication has given rise to an even more bloated population than that of the human species: the population of computers, or more generally, of any object used to to access the Internet (computers, tablets, telephones, etc.) or to transport it (servers, routers, networks, etc.).
Did you know that 352 million computers were sold worldwide in 2010, or more than 11 devices every second? A number that appears to be increasing compared to previous years, according to the barometer published in real time on the planetoscope.com site.
Despite its constant miniaturization, this species is becoming increasingly bulky and participates in the depletion of the planet's resources. The cumulative energy is considerable, not to say phenomenal, and the minerals used are becoming scarce.
By way of illustration, let us cite 2 other striking figures published on the planetoscope site: since the beginning of the year 40 billion KWh have been consumed by data centers on the planet, and 450 million kilos of CO2 would be emitted by queries launched on Google (a query on Google would produce 7g of C02 due to the immense amount of energy consumed by the approximately 500 servers of the American search engine).
These statistics are frightening and rightly fuel the critical eye that many environmental observers take on these technologies.
According to them, the Internet is even the last straw that will overflow the vessel of over-exploitation of the planet.
Because our planet, our good old earth, is going badly. Scientific studies and analyzes dealing with our senseless overconsumption and the dramatic depletion of terrestrial resources are numerous and today little disputed. As an original illustration, let us quote the initiative of the Canadian NGO Global Footprint Network, which calculates the “earth overshoot day”, that is to say the day of “global overtaking of the earth”, according to scientific parameters of consumption.
This day is precisely the day when the cumulative consumption over the year exceeds the earth's renewal capacity. Their observation is that this day comes earlier and earlier each year: it was estimated on August 21 in 2010.
For its part, the ecological site Terresacree.org estimated, in an article published on October 29, 2008, that at the rate of current consumption and growth indicators, humanity will need a second planet in 2030 and that, as soon as now it would take 5 planets earth to cover our needs if they were modeled on those of an average American.
An obvious corollary of overcrowding, the scarcity of resources is one of the major problems that the man of the XNUMXst century will have to face.
Whether fossil or not, it is now obvious that vital natural resources: energy, water, fish, crops ... are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of men who overpopulate the planet.
The sacrosanct dogma of growth as the engine of the economy by the states is no stranger to this situation.
In his didactic work L'équation du nénuphar, Albert Jacquard explains with pedagogy what represents a growth which is added to itself, as is the case of our GDP.
Beyond the understanding of the mathematical object, this example allows us to understand the speed with which the irreparable can be reached at the end of the process when we stack growth on growth.
This mode of reasoning on which all our economies are unfortunately based - the growth rate even being a barometer of the good health of a country! -, would only be relevant in the event of unlimited resources. Without this simple condition, it is a guaranteed clash, with a diabolical acceleration at the end of the cycle, as shown in the pictorial example of the species of water lily, which ultimately dies overnight due to its imperitivity (for the record, each lily reproducing each day identically, if we consider that the lake is filled with lily pads in 30 days, there is still half of the lake available on the 29th day, the day before the disaster…) .
An uncontrollable overpopulation, an inevitable disappearance of natural resources, pollution such as to endanger biodiversity and the natural balance of the planet, this is the factual diagram - unfortunately indisputable - in which we have engaged the world which has welcomed us. .
In 2005, during a televised interview, as the demographie-responsable.org site recalls, Claude Lévi Strauss, almost a hundred years old, declared:
"What I see are the current ravages, it is the frightening disappearance of living species, whether plant or animal ... The human species lives under a form of internal poisoning regime. When I think about the present and the world in which I am ending my life: it is not a world that I love ”.
With Lévi Strauss, one of our greatest philosophers, ethnologists, and contemporary anthropologists, let us underline this observation of failure of the human species.
Nature cannot trust man to regulate himself: it is beyond the faculties of homo sapiens. However, we know that it intervenes, we will say “surreptitiously”, to favor the adaptation of species whose vital context is threatened, which is indeed the situation in which we find ourselves.
Assuming that such an adaptation has been "decided", what are the objectives that it could pursue? In this light, let's observe the medium-term ecological consequences of our migration to the virtual.
Firstly, in terms of travel and transportation, the gain will become gigantic.
E-commerce, e-administration and e-services pursue the same objective: that of avoiding our trips. When I order a DVD on the Internet, I do not go to the physical store, although I would have taken my vehicle to go there. The delivery is shared (the deliverers do not fill a truck with a single DVD).
The trend is irreversible: signs in the completely virtual front office are multiplying, driven by the success of the giants eBay and Amazon. At the same time, traditional businesses are doubling their front office by creating virtual signs (example: fnac.com).
If the consumer follows, as evidenced by the evolution of online sales statistics, the less profitable physical signs will disappear through the game of economic productivity. So, in just a few years (if we extrapolate the trend), there will no longer be a physical front office and we will be able to buy everything without moving us.
For its part, electronic administration is (finally) emerging: all administrative procedures are being dematerialized (following in the footsteps of the success of the tax declaration). Before long, ALL administrative procedures can be completed online; do you think we will continue to go to the prefecture or town hall for pure pleasure?
In terms of services, the trend is identical: the front offices of banks, tour operators, etc ... currently duplicated in services on the Internet will gradually disappear (count on banks to calculate the economic ratio of a virtual front office centralized by compared to a multitude of physical signs…).
Faced with this generalized economy of physical travel, it is obvious that the energy cost of transporting digital data from virtual signs to sedentary individuals will become marginal: the drop of water will not overflow the vase, because the vase will be partly empty.
Second, the reduction in production activities is underway and will accelerate.
In the previous example, we assumed the purchase of a DVD, that is to say a material object. For the same use (watching a film), let's now replace the purchase of DVD media by the purchase of the same film in VOD (Video On Demand). In this case there is no outward journey or shared delivery since the dematerialized film is played remotely (say "in streaming mode"). But this gain in travel hides another, even more beneficial for the resources of the planet: that of the production of physical media, in this case DVDs in our example. A VOD film, in fact, requires only one physical medium: the disk space of the server that will host it to allow its reading on the Internet. This is to be compared to the thousands (or even millions) of DVD media (or VSH in the past) that had to be manufactured, pressed, and then distributed.
Let us then observe the dematerialization phenomenon from above: it affects all objects of exchange, communication, knowledge. Sounds, images, documents, books, videos… all have been digitized in just 20 years and all are being exported to the virtual space, on which they can be easily shared thanks to the gift of ubiquity intangible. It is a global phenomenon, practically irreversible: digital photography has replaced analog photography, digital sound has replaced analog, digital broadcasting is imposed as standard ...
Thus, by moving our objects of exchange and communication - which make the specificity of the human species - in a dematerialized space, we very considerably reduce the physical production of these same objects and the ecological cost of their multiplication and their diffusion. .
This sharing and these virtual exchanges are increased by the advent of social networks.
Thirdly, social networks help humanity to settle down.
The success of social networks such as Facebook continues to surprise us with its scale. Sociologically, the phenomenon is indeed extraordinary, that in itself should alert us.
The gain in travel induced by the use of online services, as we have seen above, is enormous. But it should not (from the point of view of nature), that it be replaced by new leisure trips. The trips saved by our acts of purchasing administration, online services generate in fact as much time saved, that we could take advantage to visit, travel ... in short move again, incorrigible as we are!
According to the 2010 Crédoc report on the dissemination of information and communication technologies in French society, the number of users of social networks on the internet explodes: in 2010, 36% of French people were affected. 19 million people (+ 7 million in one year) participated in networks such as Facebook, Myspace.
Connection times follow the same curve: they keep increasing from year to year. New generations, in particular, are spending more and more time talking on social networks, which are truly becoming new places for leisure and social life.
From this point of view, social networks represent a displacement of our places of leisure from dry land to virtual space, which will help us to settle down.
In conclusion, we can seriously consider the following hypothesis: the Internet is not simply an additional source of consumption and exploitation of resources; this migration to virtual space, on the contrary, constitutes a defense mechanism against nature against us, intended to make us ecologically less aggressive.
Of course, this is a hypothesis, an observation and not a wish. To prevent ecological risk and preserve our planet, it would be better to act in a conscious and concerted manner and take the path - admittedly difficult - of declining birth rates, decreasing and choosing a lifestyle of frugality and not overconsumption.
To deepen this reflection, I refer to the reading of the essay "The avatar is the future of man" which has just appeared (and which can be seen in the blog dedicated to the book: http://www.dematerialisation-avatar.com ), in which I study the phenomenon of dematerialization with the gaze of a scientific investigator convinced that this movement too fast, badly tied up, hides something; I put in parallel the major risks of the planet (demography, over-growth, ecology) as so many motives for a mutation of the human species and in a prospective approach, I try to paint the outlines of this evolution.
